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Z E S Z Y T Y N A U K O W E UNIWERSYTETU RZESZOWSKIEGO

SERIA FILOLOGICZNA

ZESZYT 47/2007 STUDIA ANGLICA RESOVIENSIA 4

Grzegorz A. KLEPARSKI, Marta PIKOR-NIEDZIAŁEK

GENDER AND LANGUAGE: TOWARDS A FEMINIST

PRAGMATICS BY CHRISTINE CHRISTIE, EDINBURGH

UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2000. PP. 202. ISBN O-7486-0935-O

In recent years there has been a sudden increase of publications dedicated to

feminist issues treated from different angles and points of view. Also pragmatics

– the much-unwanted child of Chomskyan wedlock – is more and more

frequently treated from new angles, including diachronic perspective in such

works as, for example, Arnovick (1999) which offers seven case studies in

English illocutionary development. Judged from this perspective, Christie’s

Gender and Language: Towards a Feminist Pragmatics is yet another

comprehensive, hence valuable contribution to changing patterns in the studies

of language and its use. However, unlike the recent works on pragmatics such as,

for example, Kasher (1998) or Verschueren (1999), only Christie’s volume deals

with the concept of feminist pragmatics.

At the very outset of her book the author adopts George Yule’s (1996:3)

definition of pragmatics that pragmatics is the study of how more gets

communicated than is said, and, because Christie’s book does not presuppose

any prior exposure either to pragmatics or feminist studies on the part of the

reader, this definition seems to be fully sufficient for the purposes set for her

work. Both pragmatic and feminist approaches to language use are introduced in

the two opening chapters of the book. In the first chapter such issues as sentence

meaning and speaker meaning are discussed. Moreover, the author explains why

studies of language in use need a pragmatic dimension and why pragmatics and

feminism are relevant to one another. The second chapter presents the diversity

and common concerns of feminist research as well as feminist approaches to

language use. It also introduces such concepts as language and power, and

accounts for why feminist studies of gender and language use need pragmatics.

The aim of the third chapter is to familiarize the readers with a set of analytical

tools employed within pragmatic studies such as, for example, entailment,

presupposition, implicature and textual coherence. In addition, it focuses on the

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scope of pragmatics and the generation of both word meaning and prepositional

meaning. The remaining chapters of the study are devoted to discussing various

approaches to discourse analysis such as, speech act theory, Gricean

pragmatics, politeness theory and relevance theory. It is worth pointing out that

the discussion of each of these approaches is accompanied by a sample analysis

of gender differences in language use.

In spite of the fact that the book is an introductory guide to feminist

pragmatics one gets the impression that the critique of methods to discourse

analysis is far too brief, and hence superficial. More importantly, the author of

the book seems to be far too selective in the choice of the approaches to

discourse analysis she discusses since only a fraction of them is presented – in a

cut-and-paste manner – and applied to the study of gender. One would expect to

find within the canvas of such an introductory book at least some sections that

would present even in a cursory manner such aspects of discourse analysis as

variation analysis, ethnography of communication, conversation analysis, the

Birmingham school, textual linguistics and interactional sociolinguistics.

Obviously, the question that may be raised at this point is whether the

approaches evidently disregarded by the author of the book are of any relevance

to feminism and the studies of gender or whether gender plays any role in their

application.

Likewise, one cannot escape the feeling that such pragmatic principles, as,

for example, politeness principles are not universal. Kopytko (1995:487) claims

that a speaker should not be seen as a deterministic device, or an abstract

concept devoid of attitudes, personality. Christie’s book provides evidence

which proves unambiguously that a single politeness strategy can be understood

in quite distinct ways and that the gender of the interlocutors appears to have an

impact on which strategies are selected and how they function. Finally, it seems

that approaches to discourse cannot be universal unless they incorporate the

studies of gender into their analyses.

On the whole, this work certainly offers a new perspective on discourse

analysis because it postulates that the studies of gender must necessarily be

incorporated into the analysis of different approaches to discourse if the analysis

is to be both complete and verifiable. In fact, Christie’s volume shows that

pragmatics and the study of gender are much interrelated. Therefore, if an

analyst starts with analyzing discourse, sooner or later he or she will end up

analyzing gender differences and vice versa. Other studies analyzing language

and gender that have been published so far looked for evidence from such

branches of science as anthropology, dialectology, sociolinguistics and social

psychology but – to the best of our knowledge – no other work has ever made

the connection between studies of gender and pragmatics that evident and clear.

Christie (2000:30) writes: pragmatics provides a solid descriptive basis for

analysis, and feminism rich insights into socio-cultural phenomena such as

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gender. It seems fairly clear that to disagree with this statement would be a grave

and empirically groundless mistake, to say the least.

References

Arnovick, L.K. (1999). Diachronic Pragmatics. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins

Publishing Company.

Christie, Ch. (2000). Gender and Language: Towards a Feminist Pragmatics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh

University Press.

Kasher, A. (ed.). (1998). Pragmatics: Critical Concepts. Volumes I–VI. London: Routledge.

Kopytko, R. (1995). “Against rationalistic pragmatics”. Journal of Pragmatics 23. 475–91.

Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Yerschueren, J. (1999). Understanding Pragmatics. London: Arnold.